Interview with Steven Vincent

This interview with Steven Vincent, author of In the Red Zone, is enlightening. Vincent is a former art critic turned war journalist by the events of 9/11. His book covers his experiences during two separate trips to Iraq in 2003 and 2004.

...Jeff Harrell: When, after all the planning and the long journey, you finally made it to Baghdad, were you disappointed by what you found? Your descriptions of the city in In the Red Zone are unsentimental: It’s an unlovely city, you say, choked with smog and littered with garbage. What was it like to arrive in such a place? Steven Vincent: Actually, I was pleasantly surprised. I’d packed mosquito netting, water purification tablets, protein bars and a set of silverware, all sorts of survival equipment, as if I were heading to Mogadishu. What I found was a bustling city with markets overflowing with food and bottled water, not to mention countless restaurants and “kabob stands.” (Iraq has never in its history suffered famine.) The harshness of the environment — the “unloveliness” of the smog and garbage (and, I must say, many Iraqi people) — didn’t affect me until the novelty of simply being there faded. To be in a place like Baghdad — or perhaps any storied place — is to experience the microcosmic and macrocosmic of life simultaneously. By that I mean every detail, even the smallest, is fascinating — the architecture, the way people look and talk, the taxi cabs and heat, trying to speak Arabic and learn what to order on the menu. Then there is the overwhelming sense of the past and present. I remember walking at twilight down a busy shopping street just as the lights switched on and a muezzin began calling from a mosque. Right at that moment, two American Humvees rumbled past, each with a soldier standing and surveying the scene. They passed a grove of palms, and the mixture of the light, the crowds, the muezzin’s call and the military vehicles transfixed me. This is significant, something told me. For good or ill, this is history... Steven Vincent: ...I’m frequently asked, how can a nation cobbled together by Winston Churchill from disparate religious and ethnic groups possibly form a democracy? In response, I mention the 13 colonies before the Revolution. In retrospect, they strike us as rather homogenous — aside, of course, from the issue of slavery. But to the colonies themselves, they were wildly different, split by religious, regional and economic interests. Somehow they pulled it together. And in fact, a pluralistic society like Iraq is probably the most suited for democracy. Within the limitations of a constitution, various parties of Shia and Sunnis and Kurds must dicker and horse-trade and compromise among themselves. Because of these conflicting interests, no one party can accumulate total power — a system of checks and balances, in other words... Steven Vincent: ...Say a foreign power invades a nation, topples a heinous dictator and attempts to midwife the first democracy this nation has ever had. Are they "occupiers" or "liberators?" Are they "occupying" the country, or “reconstructing” it? Are they "imposing" democracy, or "assisting its birth?"... ...To describe the Coalition as "occupiers" legitimizes those who take up arms against them. We oppose the “Nazi occupation” of France, and admire the "French resistance" — while those who assist the Germans become "collaborators." "Guerillas" are brave fighters risking their lives to overthrow imperialism in the name of national liberation; "paramilitaries" are terrorists seeking to re-establish a right-wing tyranny. One side constellates images of resourceful rebels — from the colonial Minutemen to the Viet Cong to Star Wars’ "Rebel forces" — the other conjures imperialist oppressors, storm troopers, Darth Vader’s minions. Somehow, we have allowed the press and academia to reverse the definition, permitting them to call fascists and criminal thugs "freedom fighters" while the true Iraqi resistance become members of the "American-backed government"... Here’s a question I’d like to put to Ted Rall and Michael Moore: could you stand in front of the families of the election workers killed in Baghdad and tell them that their loved ones were "collaborators" killed by the "Iraqi resistance?" ...

Shape of Days: Interview with Steven Vincent